My Life in Writing (The Early Years)

         I was 13 when my grandmother died (just days before Elvis).  It was shortly after that I decided to be a writer.

         I already had some experience.  The previous year, I was chosen to be one of the school reporters for the local weekly newspaper.  It wasn’t a paying gig, but I got excused from class and got to sit in a room and talk to the cutest girl in the school - Marcia.  It was fun until I realized all she wanted to talk about was my best friend Dennis.  Then, I focused on my writing.

          Marcia and I identified two principal areas of coverage.  The sports beat and the cafeteria beat.  Marcia took the cafeteria beat, which basically involved writing down the weekly lunch menus.  I took sports.  Given this was Indiana, that meant basketball.  I was a bit weak on narrative, so I simply listed the scores and featured the leading scorer (which was usually me).

 

          Middle school was a dry period for me as I moved from a backwoods small town to a big suburban mall community.  One good thing I did during this period was start keeping a journal.  It was here that my writer’s “voice” began to emerge.  I began to develop my penchant for succinct sentences packed with meaning and emotion.  Here’s a classic example -

“I really like Kristy McNichol.  I think she’s hot.”

 

 

              In early high school, I focused on sports and classes.  Since moving from one of the worst school districts in the state to one of the best, they placed me in remedial English classes.  This actually turned out to be a good thing because I learned such basics as sentence structure.  I also learned to write simply and, even as my vocabulary expanded, I always tried to write for the average reader (who, I’m told, reads at about a third grade level.)  

 

 

          My Senior year I decided to branch out, write for the school newspaper and yearbook.   Sports again.   Highlighting myself again. 

           More importantly, I began a project that really gave me a taste for what writing can do.  I started writing a satire of our class.   I called it No Biggy.  I would compose these hand-written chapters about the silly things we did and even sillier things we wanted to do (or wanted people to believe we did).  Then, I would pass them around for people to read (copiers were scarce in 1982).  It really caught on.  At times I had to track down chapters through 5 or 6 people until I found who was currently reading them.  I lost a few to teachers confiscating them during class.

 

 

         Though I scored nearly 200 points better in Math than English on my SAT, I was determined to be an English major.  I enrolled in a small Liberal Arts program where I could be assured to get a good education that would prepare me for absolutely nothing in the work force.

          Immediately, I began to write for the school newspaper (a weekly).  Before I graduated, I had written over 100 pieces on a variety of subjects.  I remember very little except the basketball coach chiding me for not coming to the games (I was Sports Editor at the time).  Oh, and one piece I wrote about the ignorance of the college president.  That one earned me a visit with the Dean.

 

          As my Senior Project, I decided to write a novella that would be filled with short stories I had heard from my family and growing up.  Looking back at it now, I cringe at how depressing it reads.  Filled with angst-ridden partial sentences, bleak under-achieving characters, and a faux-Holden Caufield-esque tone written in a psuedo-beatnik style.  I called it Life (In Obvious Places).  It ended like this -

 

 

          Seven years ago, Claudia Matson asked me what I was writing in my notebook.

“Stories.”

“What kind of stories?”

“I don’t know.  Just stories.”

“What are they about?”

“People.”

“What kind of people?”

“Good people, I guess.”

“Any love stories?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Cause I don’t know any.”

“Can’t you just make one up?”

“I don’t think so.”

          Then she looked at me real strange, like I was stupid or something, and walked away.

 

           (In case you missed the subtle nuance in the story, I’m saying I had no love in my life.  I was pathetic.)

 

 

          So, I graduated from college and moved on to bigger and better things - a job in a plastics factory.  We were on the cutting edge of the plastics industry, one of the first to mass produce those plastic bags all the stores have now - at grocery stores, department stores, clothing stores, Staples. 

          My job was to take the bags off the conveyor belt and place them in cardboard boxes on a “skid”.  When the boxes were full, I would tape them shut.  When the skid was full, I’d motion to have someone pick it up.  Then, I would start again.  12 hours a day.  4 days a week.  8 hours guaranteed overtime.  More, if I wanted.

Here I am with two of my co-workers at the company picnic -

 

 

          Working at the plastics factory gave me a lot of time to think.  And, when I wasn’t working, I had plenty of time to write.  Then again, I also had plenty of time to drink.  I wound up drinking more than writing.  But, my drinking (along with getting dumped by several young women) did inspire me to write a few country-and-western songs.  I can’t remember much about them.  I do remember one that had a tragic refrain that went something like this -

 

Don’t you think I’d cry if I could?

Oh, don’t you think I’d cry if I could?

I’ve been to a place full of empty space,

And don’t you think I’d cry if I could?

 

 

For some reason, Nashville didn’t pick that one up.

 

… continued with “My Life in Writing (The Later Years)“